


A Little Exhilaration

by youwilllovemylaugh



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Clubbing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:19:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/pseuds/youwilllovemylaugh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Steve take Natasha and Sam up on their offer - to go clubbing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Exhilaration

The club was not Natasha’s idea, as Sam had tried to make Steve think the week before.

“It’ll be fun,” Sam said over the phone. “I know you and Buck like your quiet nights in, but it’s been months since we’ve had the whole crew together for a night out on the town.”

Steve considered this. He stared at the blue tile in their kitchen – old and worn, like Steve and Bucky liked. It was true that they hadn’t all been out in months. Steve had been busy with S.H.I.E.L.D stuff, and Bucky. Well, Bucky had been experiencing a rough patch lately. There had been cold sweats and anguished sobs in the small hours of morning, jitters and jumpiness in slow-moving afternoons, when the sun threw long shadows at him from hidden corners. The worst part of it was over, though – there had been a week or so in the middle, about a month ago, when Bucky woke up in a panic every night and Steve watched as he silently fought to remember where he was, who he was, why Steve’s face was so familiar, and all Steve could to was sit over him and hope that the memories came back.

“I know,” Steve said. He toyed with the fraying cuff of his light blue button-down shirt, thinking. “I guess I can talk to Bucky about it.”

“Yes,” Sam said, with a hiss on the last letter. “Let me know soon; Natasha’s renting a car.”

Steve rolled his eyes, then ended his phone call. He turned around, thinking he might make himself some tea, or something, to make the talking easier, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Bucky sitting at the kitchen table in his sweatpants, fresh from bed.

“Jesus,” Steve breathed. Ever since he’d come back, escaped Hydra and recovered, Bucky had been quiet. His feet didn’t thud on the ground when he walked, like they used to; his breathing, when he was calm, was quiet enough to fool Steve into thinking he’d shut off, stopped working, that Hydra had installed some microchip or power switch in his brain and finally decided to remotely deprogram him for good. “You’ve got to stop doing this, Buck.”

“What were you going to ask me?” Bucky asked. His blue eyes were ringed with dark circles – he’d been asleep all afternoon; the previous night had been particularly restless.

“That was Sam on the phone,” Steve said. His hesitancy shrank when he saw Bucky smile at the mention of Sam’s name. “He wanted to know if we wanted to, uh, check out that new place, on DuPont Circle, with him and Natasha.”

“That club?” Bucky turned down the corners of his mouth.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Steve said quickly, finding Bucky’s hands under the table and enclosing them in his own. He didn’t like how the human one felt cold. “If you’re too tired or too anything to go – we don’t have to. We can stay home and find something to watch on TV, if you want. The Netflix is sure to have something.”

Bucky smiled. He ran his thumb over Steve’s fingers, laced them through his own. “I’ll think about it. Maybe if we take a nap first, I’ll feel better.”

Steve smiled, liking the way he used the word “we.” It still felt new sometimes, in the way that favorite sweaters felt on their first wear after a summer in the closet – familiar, well-loved, and also a little stiff and reeking of time lost, time gone. It was still new – exciting, even – to think of how Bucky always slept better when Steve was in his arms.

He let the way to the bedroom, turned down the bed as Bucky removed his T-shirt, his sweatpants, and climbed in first.

Steve followed him, taking off his gray pants and the blue button-down. He sighed into the soft sheets, into Bucky’s strong arms and the warmth of his soft bare chest. He kept the metal one tucked up under his head – a hard, unforgiving pillow that Steve was sure made Bucky remember the hard places they’d slept in the war, made him feel comfortable and grounded and better.

Bucky was asleep in minutes – Steve could tell by the way his breathing had become all but inaudible – and Steve rolled over to face his partner.

He didn’t like the word boyfriend. It felt strange in his mouth, strange to apply to Bucky, who felt like so much more than someone Steve was simply dating. But he couldn’t call Bucky his husband, either – they weren’t married, probably never would, because it wasn’t really something that needed to be so documented, so legalized. He preferred the word partner – it suggested all the seriousness and commitment, and came closest in its connotations to what Bucky meant to him.

Steve ran a careful index finger over Bucky’s lips, down the curve of his jaw, the echo of his neck, the convex surface of his chest. He’d gotten a little bit softer – S.H.I.E.L.D. had decommissioned him for the time being, for reasons of mental health. And the last few months of lazing around, eating in turn pints of Ben and Jerry’s (Americone Dream, because Bucky liked the chocolate-covered waffle cone bits, and Steve loved Colbert) and bags of Cheetos, and fucking each other senseless in various parts of their apartment, had certainly not helped Bucky any. Not even the sex, which got athletic sometimes, when Bucky was feeling better and they had both slept, had staved off the fifteen extra pounds Bucky had put on, the little bit of chub that padded his hips and his stomach, that filled his face a little better, and, really, made him look healthier than he had recently. It hung over the waist of his jeans just a little; his thighs and his ass filled out the legs and the seat of them so that Steve could see all the curves the weight had created. Even before the war, Bucky had been the kind of guy who needed to work to look the way he did – he had an exercise regiment and he ate right and never took seconds – so Steve hadn’t ever really seen him like this.

Not that he was complaining. A pudgy Bucky felt better to him – healthier, warmer, more comfortable. Steve liked to know that he was eating at all, and seeing the evidence on him made Steve smile. He also liked feeling it – Bucky had always had this very particular poise, an awareness and acceptance of his body that made him graceful, and that hadn’t failed him, even in spite of the fifteen extra pounds. He threw his weight around like a football player – easily and beautifully – and it turned Steve on worse than anything else.

He snuggled in closer to Bucky, wrapped an arm around him under the covers and put his hand on Bucky’s ass. Bucky slept and Steve dozed; for several hours Steve watched the afternoon sun drift lower and lower, cast longer and longer shadows, pitch Bucky’s face into darkness.

Bucky opened his eyes some time around 7:30.

“Hey,” Steve said quietly, putting a hand on Bucky’s cheek. “How are you feeling?” He hated the question, tried to find other ways of asking that didn’t make him feel like he was minimizing Bucky’s problems, likening them to common colds and migraines, when they were so much more. He constantly feared being thought of as insensitive, of pushing him away when there were still days that Bucky felt unfathomably far away, unreachable, and those days were the ones Steve hated.

Bucky swallowed dryly. “I feel better,” he said. “Clearer.” A word they used to explain Bucky’s sometimes-difficult-to-place mental state.

Steve smiled. “Good.” He ran a hand through Bucky’s hair, let his arm fall to Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky’s own hands snaked up Steve’s sides; Steve liked the way the metal one had warmed over the last several hours – it was biometal, so it never really got too cold, but this way, it almost felt human.

“Do you want to go out tonight?” he asked, to Steve’s surprise.

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, Sam was right. We haven’t been out in months, and I’d like to see everyone again.”

“Well, it won’t be everyone,” Steve said. “Just Natasha and Sam, I think. Maybe Clint will tag along, but I think he’s either just getting back or preparing to head out again soon, so he may not come.”

Bucky considered this. Steve thought he saw a glimmer of relief in Bucky’s eyes.

“Cool. Call Sam, I guess,” Bucky said. “And do it in the kitchen – I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Steve smiled, pressed a kiss to Bucky’s nose, then on his mouth, before sliding out of bed to make the call.

After ambling around in the kitchen while Sam, who had clearly been preparing – or pregaming, as he put it – told him excitedly that the car – with him and Natasha in it – would arrive at theirs at 9:00.

“Yay!” Sam said loudly, before hanging up mid-syllable. Steve laughed to himself.

The conversation with Sam had been so overwhelming that he forgot about Bucky’s surprise. When he reentered their bedroom, he didn’t see Bucky right away, standing at their closet like he’d expected. Instead, a set of cool metal fingers wrapped themselves around Steve’s eyes; Bucky’s other hand slid around Steve’s hip.

“You ready?” Bucky asked. His breath was hot in Steve’s ear.

“Yeah,” Steve said, and Bucky took his hand away and spun Steve around with the other one, and then Steve felt his mouth fall open.

Bucky was standing in front of him in all black – fitted black T-shirt, the bit of leather string he’d always worn around his neck just visible over the collar – and then Steve’s eyes hit Bucky’s legs, and he stopped breathing.

Leather pants. Tight ones – smooth-looking and fitted in all the right places, crinkling around his crotch and his knees and bunching a little around his ankles, but still perfect. And then Steve noticed the little paunch that spilled over the waist of Bucky’s pants, was just visible under his shirt, above his underwear, and Steve knew it was dusted with dark hair and would be warm and soft to the touch.

“What do you think?” Bucky asked wryly. Steve was sure Bucky had heard him stop breathing, so instead he reached out and rubbed his hands all over Bucky’s belly, and then straight down his pants.

“Oh,” Bucky breathed, as Steve moved closer and closer, and closer, backing Bucky up against the wall and taking his hands out from Bucky’s pants and moving them up instead, to graze the bottom of his shirt and run his hands along the small of Bucky’s back. “That good, huh?” he asked, and he pushed his hips forward, so Steve could feel him, hard against the inside of his thigh, and said, “We can’t do anything now, you know. That car will be here very soon, and nothing I want to do to you is going to be possible in such a short amount of time.”

A small voice in Steve’s head wondered where all this was coming from – Bucky meant the world to Steve, was everything Steve needed and wanted and more, but when he went through these rough patches, he didn’t care for sex. They hadn’t had sex in nearly two weeks – not that Steve minded, he understood, of course – but this was such a change that he had to wonder. He had to wonder when Bucky had even gone out to _get_ these pants.

So he asked. Both things.

“I went out one day while you were gone,” Bucky said with a smile. “And I miss you,” he added, pulling on Steve’s hips, bringing him closer. “A lot.”

He took the words in stride, knew that Bucky would probably tire out by the end of the night and want to just sleep when he got home, maybe eat something before they went to bed. But Steve leaned forward and kissed Bucky anyway, long, deep kisses like he was trying to push Bucky through the wall, into the hallway, onto the floor. They hadn’t kissed like that in a long time, not like they each wanted to become the other, like they longed to know the other’s mouth so well they could each map them out in their minds, like it was the last time they’d ever get to do it. Steve tried to ignore the way Bucky’s cock was pressing into the space between his legs, the way his own had found its way out of the hole in the front of his boxers and _shouldn’t_ have, tried to ignore how leather pants had never even crossed his mind before, but on Bucky, they were the most important thing in the world.

“I miss you too,” Steve said when he pulled away, reluctantly.

Bucky grinned. “Okay, Captain Sap. Why don’t you get dressed now, so we can leave when the car gets here?”

Steve smirked, a little half-smile and a twist of his nose, and he let Bucky pick out his clothes (dark gray button-down, dark jeans, black boots) and by the time they’d stopped fucking around – Bucky unzipping Steve’s zipper, buttoning Steve’s buttons the wrong way and unbuttoning them over and over again, Bucky pantsing Steve when he bent to grab his shirt off the bed, Steve tackling Bucky and kissing his face over and over, until Bucky agreed not to distract him any longer – the car was outside, honking.

They left the bedroom, turning off lights as they went. Steve left one on in the kitchen, where he was sure he and Bucky would want to return when they got home – even a slightly tipsy Bucky liked to have a snack before he passed out for the night. He grabbed their house keys off the peg by the wall phone (Steve felt better having a landline, too), and met Bucky back in the hall by the front door. Steve put a hand out to stop Bucky from opening the door, then, and when Bucky turned back to meet him, Steve caught the edge of Bucky’s jaw in his lips, and stamped a line of kisses along its edge, until he pressed one right in the curve beneath his ear, then pulled away. He met Bucky’s eyes, which were dark and full of lust, with a challenge: _do you dare?_ Bucky held his gaze a minute, and then Steve followed him out of the apartment, smiling proudly.

Steve couldn’t help it – he watched Bucky’s leather-clad ass as they left the complex, passed through their vestibule and the mailboxes and descended the front steps, all the way to the car, where he looked up when Sam knocked shoulders with him and gave him a look like, _oh yeah, man?_

“Hey,” Sam said, moving back to Bucky. They slapped palms, thumped each other’s backs, and then Sam opened the car for Bucky to get in. When he ducked his head to get in, Steve watched Sam’s head whip around, to look at Steve, who made a concerted effort not to stare at Bucky’s ass anymore.

Steve, shaking his head at Sam in mock disdain, bent in after Bucky. Sam followed; Natasha was sitting across from them, legs crossed, looking killer in a sheer black shirt, pair of dark jeans, and spiky leather flats. Her lips were bright red.

“You look lovely,” Steve said, turning up a corner of his mouth at her.

Natasha gave him and Bucky a once-over. “You’re not so bad yourself, Rogers. It’s nice to see you and Bucky in something other than sweats for a change.”

Bucky smiled and swept his eyes from Natasha to Bucky. “Yeah, we clean up pretty well, don’t we?”

Steve heard Sam stifle a giggle beside him, and nudged him with his elbow.

“What? He’s right,” Sam said. “You guys are gonna have a hard time keeping other people’s hands off you.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but when he looked over at Bucky, he saw him avert his gaze, start wringing his hands in his lap, and Steve felt a pang of guilt. Maybe they shouldn’t have gone out at all.

Natasha saw this too. “Don’t listen to him,” she said to Bucky. “He’s had four shots of rum already, and we all know what a lightweight he is.”

Steve snorted; Natasha had probably had just as much, but you’d never be able to tell. He put his hand on Bucky’s knee, and Bucky faced him.

“I won’t leave your side, if you don’t want me to,” Steve said.

Bucky smiled, nodded. He put his hand over Steve’s on his knee, and then turned to watch DC flash by, as the car tore through the city.

As soon as they arrived, Sam was off. He tossed a casual wave over his shoulder as he clumsily headed inside, slapping hands with the bouncer, who nodded as Sam explained who they all were.

“Welcome, Cap,” the man said as he and Bucky approached. Natasha slid past him, careful not to let him see her face. Steve caught her wink at him as she slipped past, and knew not to say anything.

“Thanks,” Steve said, taking the man’s outstretched hand. He put his other hand on Bucky’s metal shoulder, and guided him through the door.

Inside, it was dark, and loud. The bar was split into two areas, strangely enough, and they had entered the bar area. Music pulsed from an adjoining room, where Steve thought there might be a dance floor. Booths lined the far wall; bar tables and stools sprang up at random in the space between the wall and the bar itself, which was backlit and yellow and smelled more like craft beer than anything else. Two bartenders flitted around in front of the lights, their faces obscured. This was definitely going to be a problem.

He felt Bucky tense instantly – his shoulders squared and his metal arm clicked twice, locking into place.

“Easy,” Steve said, his heart beginning to pound. “I’ll be right here, all night.” He slid his hand down to the small of Bucky’s back and pulled him closer. He nuzzled his nose into the soft flesh just past the seam of Bucky’s metal arm, but he knew it wouldn’t do too much good.

“Okay,” Bucky said. Steve watched his Adam’s apple bob. “Should we get drinks?”

“Are you sure you want to drink?” Steve asked.

Bucky nodded. “We’ll give it a shot.”

“All right,” Steve said. He watched a smile tug at the corner of Bucky’s anxiety-taut mouth, as they made their way up to the bar.

A tall woman with cropped red hair and a silver nose piercing took their order – a Bronx for Bucky and a Gibson for Steve – and Steve felt himself blush when she smirked at them.

“No one ever orders those,” she said, laughing to herself as she prepared the two martini glasses accordingly.

_She must not recognize us_ , he thought, as he grinned at her and shrugged.

When she finished, she handed Steve the glasses. “You boys have a nice night, all right?” she said, winking.

“Thanks,” Steve said. He turned to Bucky. “Do you want to find us a table? You were always good at picking the best ones.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth turned up again. “You’re better at that.”

“At what?” Steve asked.

Bucky took his Bronx. “Talking to girls.”

Steve blushed again – Bucky chuckled – and Steve followed him to a booth in the back, closest to the music, farthest from the crowd around the bar.

They sat in relative silence while they sipped their drinks, Steve more eagerly than Bucky. He didn’t know what to say. The last time he’d been out – really been out, in earnest, like this – Steve had been five-foot-four and ninety-five pounds, and Bucky had dragged him out of their bedroom in his parents’ apartment in Brooklyn to meet girls around the corner, where his mother wouldn’t see. They’d been fifteen the first time, twenty-five the last. Bucky was the one always ready to go out, always looking for something to spice up their evenings together. Swing dancing, cocktails at the cute club around the corner that Steve liked because the owner had a cat that liked to curl up in his lap when he sat in their favorite booth. Bucky was the one who made the plans, found the girls, got the drinks – the Gibson was Steve’s drink because Bucky thought he’d like it. And he was right.

Steve looked over at Bucky now, sipping his drink, wringing his hands, pushing his human fingers through his hair. He swiveled the martini glass between two dexterous metal fingers. A blue guilt had melted into the pit of Steve’s stomach, filled him from the inside out. He sipped his drink, hoping it would go away, but it seemed only to make it worse. The serum had worn off a little with their days of lazing about and eating – Steve’s metabolism had slowed enough to bear the effects of the alcohol. He looked over at Bucky again, watched his eyes get glassier and glassier, and figured his metabolism had slowed too.

Natasha slunk over, leaned onto her forearms on the table and made eyes at Steve. “How you doing?”

He cocked an eyebrow. Bucky didn’t seem to notice her – just stared into his martini glass like it would magically refill.

“Better question – how’s _he_ doing?” she asked, looking at Bucky and smirking. “He’s got a glazed-over look like I haven’t seen in a long time.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky said, not moving his eyes. The defensiveness in his tone made the hairs on Steve’s neck stand on end.

“All right, Barnes,” she said, rolling her hips and pushing off the table. “There’s a crazy hot dude in the other room that’s been making eyes at me this whole night, and I’m leaving for Bani tomorrow morning, so it’s perfect timing, you know?” She slapped the table, winked at Steve, and disappeared into the darkness of the bar.

“How many do you think _she’s_ had?” Steve asked, but when he turned to look at Bucky, he saw him edging out of the booth and onto the floor.

“I don’t know, but I kind of want to be on her level,” he said, shooting a dark look at Steve. “You want anything else?”

He worried as, slowly, he pushed his martini glass toward Bucky, who took it with his metal hand and wandered off toward the bar. Steve wondered if he should go with him, keep him company. Then he wondered if Bucky would find that offensive, insulting, like Steve was underestimating him, and he stayed put.

It did give him an excuse to watch Bucky’s ass as he passed by, though – leather-clad, curvy and round and full like it hadn’t been in years – and Steve found it hard to look away once he started.

Bucky returned, and, almost immediately upon sliding back into his place in the booth, downed his entire Bronx in one go.

“Easy,” Steve said, when Bucky righted his head, spluttering. “You don’t need to get there that quickly.”

Bucky groaned wetly. “It’s just to take the edge off.”

“You don’t need to take the edge off,” Steve said. “We can leave if you want to. I’ll find Sam or Natasha, and we can go home.”

“I’m fine.”

“Really, you don’t need to push yourself –”

“I’m fine,” Bucky repeated, and that was that.

So Steve, in a snap decision, knocked back his Gibson and mimicked the noise Bucky had made. “If you’re gonna drink like that, so am I.”

Bucky shot a look at Steve, one he couldn’t quite read, and then he smiled so wide that Steve couldn’t help but lean over and kiss him. Once, long, shamelessly.

“If drinking like me makes you kiss me like that,” Bucky said with a glint in his eye, “I want you to be drunk.”

Steve grinned, and then put his hand on Bucky’s thigh. It was warm and sturdy, and felt like anticipation. “Okay.”

They got up, walked over to the bar and ordered two shots of tequila. A part of Steve worried – would Sam reprimand him in the morning for this? Was Bucky using alcohol to cope? Could Steve even blame him if he was? – but the alcohol had claimed the long-term rationalizing parts of his brain, and all he could think about as the waitress set the shots on the table, was how warm Bucky’s thigh had felt under his palm.

Steve salted Bucky’s hand for him, showed him how to properly hold the lime wedge – in the curve of his hand between his thumb and forefinger – so he could bite it easily, and then, in unison, they hailed Nick Fury and tossed their heads back.

Alcohol was warm, too. Steve had kept a bottle of vodka on top of his fridge ever since he came back, in case he woke up in the middle of the night with cold sweats and a chill down his spine he couldn’t shake, not under all the blankets in his apartment, not wearing all the sweaters in his closet, not after a whole kettle of tea. It was something only the vodka could shake as it scalded his throat, boiled his (usually, in the middle of the night) empty stomach.

Bucky had been frozen. Bucky didn’t know that – Steve had found out in the reports Natasha pulled from Kiev that cryogenic treatments had been used to wipe him – but there was still a lot Bucky didn’t know about himself. At least not consciously; the nights he woke up screaming, remembering, terrified, were the worst ones.

So who was Steve to judge him? Who was Steve to tell him not to drink, not to lose himself, when he’d been trying to do the same thing in the interim?

The thoughts pass Steve’s head in the moments before the alcohol hits his stomach, and they precede the overwhelming, muscle-relaxing realization that he was drunk.

He took Bucky’s hand after he set down the lime, and led him to the other room, where the music was still pumping.

The room appeared mostly white and black, and had spiraling, multi-colored lights flashing around, under the floors, from the ceiling, out of the disc jockey’s station. Along the nearest wall was another bar, from which more multi-colored light poured; it didn’t have any barstools. People were everywhere – dancing, a crowd pulsing to the beat, obscuring nearly everything. The whole room kind of overwhelmed Steve; he squeezed Bucky’s hand.

“Let’s find Sam,” Steve said, trying to monitor Bucky’s reaction to being pulled into the loud, messy room, and failing as his brain inadequately processed their gaze.

“Uh, all right,” Bucky said. Steve pulled him along. “As long as we don’t have to dance.”

Steve laughed. “Of course not. You remember what a terrible dancer I was, right?”

Bucky smiled.

Sam wasn’t hard to find. In fact, he was the only person in the whole bar making out with someone against the back wall.

“Of course,” Steve said. He stopped a few yards away, leaned up against the bar. Bucky sidled up beside him, flung a proprietary human arm around Steve.

His breath was suddenly hot in Steve’s ear. “We can join him, if you want,” Bucky said, and when Steve turned to look at him, he caught Bucky’s mouth in his.

It wasn’t hard to move from the bar to the wall, only a few feet, and still somehow Bucky managed to trip over Steve’s boots enough times that they landed against it with enough force to rattle it.

“Hey!”

It took Steve a minute to realize that Sam had noticed them. Maybe it was because Bucky’s hand had somehow wandered down to Steve’s ass in the interim, and was squeezing.

The guy Sam had been kissing didn’t wander over with him, but instead slapped his ass and went in the other direction, grinning.

“Who was that?” Steve asked. Bucky’s hand was still on his ass, but he was no longer pinned to the wall.

“That guy?” Sam said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “I don’t even know. He just started kissing me, and I said, ‘Hey. I’ve had four Jaegerbombs and a whiskey sour – what do I care?’”

Steve just laughed.

“You two look like you were about to get into some business over here,” Sam said, swirling a drunk finger around in a circle between them. “Don’t think I don’t see Mr. Metal Fingers over here with his hand on your ass.”

Steve blushed. He felt Bucky’s hand slip into the pocket of his jeans.

“At least I know this guy’s name,” Bucky said, and Sam giggled sheepishly.

“Yeah, yeah, okay. You didn’t used to.”

Steve winced; he saw Bucky give Sam a rueful smile.

“For that, you’re gonna take a shot with us,” Bucky said, and without further preamble, he turned around and took a step and slammed his metal hand on the bar top.

“Three shots of tequila,” Bucky said to the man who approached him. He looked behind himself at Sam. “This guy’s paying.”

“You got it,” the barkeep said, and Bucky pulled Steve into him. He pressed his nose into Steve’s neck, and Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s heaving torso. He breathed heavily, like the adrenaline rushing him was enough to knock him out, or propel him forward at top speed for forty-five miles.

“You okay?” Steve whispered into Bucky’s ear. He brushed his hand over the soft, recently shorn hair over Bucky’s ear.

“A little…exhilarated,” Bucky said. “And a lot turned on.”

Steve looked down at Bucky, tilted his face up, and kissed him.

“Easy, easy, fellas,” Sam said, leaning over and nudging Steve’s shoulder with his own. “We haven’t even had our shots yet.”

The three small glasses sat on the bar top, and in a matter of seconds, Bucky pulled away from Steve and downed the amber liquid.

“You’re not taking any prisoners tonight, are you?” Sam asked, chuckling. The alcohol didn’t burn Steve’s throat going down this time.

“Just–hic, Steve here,” Bucky said, replacing his hand in the back right pocket of Steve’s jeans.

“Oh, really,” Sam said, sarcastically skeptical, pretending not to know better, like he always did.

“Oh, yes–hic,” Bucky said, and Steve, noticing, looked over at him again.

“Do you have…hiccups right now?”

Bucky blushed.

“Ooh,” Sam said, turning it into a laugh. “Maybe I better go find Natasha.”

“Don’t count on it. She was after some dude when we saw her last,” Steve said. He tried to ignore Bucky’s fingers in the back pocket of his jeans, but it was hard to do when he kept moving them.

“You saw her?”

“Yeah, flitting around. Getting drinks.”

“How was she doing?”

Steve looked to Bucky. “She was…fine. Better than normal.”

“She can really hold her stuff,” Bucky said, and then hiccupped.

Sam smiled at him. “You might want to hold your breath, or something.”

Bucky shrugged. Steve hoped he wouldn’t do it – the hiccups were cute.

“So, it’s a no-go on Nat, then?” Sam asked.

Steve shrugged now. “I mean, unless you really want in on whatever she’s doing, I wouldn’t try it,” he said. “And, as we all know, Nat’s comfortable with _everything_.”

Sam laughed. Bucky moved his fingers. “I got it,” Sam said. “I’m gonna go dance, or something. Let me know if y’all leave – I’ll try to head out with you.”

They parted ways, Steve watching Sam leave their area of the bar for the dance floor, where he promptly found someone to grind up against.

“He’s crazy,” Bucky said. At some point, he’d snagged another Bronx. Steve tried to crush the pot of worry in his chest that was threatening to boil over. _It’s just one night._

“He’s a little much, yes,” Steve said. “I like you better.”

Bucky’s fingers tightened on Steve’s ass; he kissed his cheek. “I like you, too.”

Steve smiled, took a sip of Bucky’s drink. He thought about putting his own hands on Bucky’s ass, about massaging it until the fabric wore off, until he was down to nothing but skin. The thought woke something in Steve’s pants.

“How much longer do you want to stay here?” he asked, hoping he wasn’t too obvious.

But he was. “I can maybe go soon,” Bucky said. “I’d like to go soon, if that’s what you’re asking. But…” he came in close, swung his lips in close to Steve’s ear. “Only on one condition.”

Steve turned to face him. “What’s that?” he asked, but the words became unnecessary as soon as he felt Bucky’s metal hand slip between his legs. “Oh.”

“We have to do something about this,” he said softly, into Steve’s ear. He rubbed his hand, two long slow strokes, before sliding it up the length of Steve’s torso and up to his neck, where he pulled Steve in for a kiss, hot and wet and needy.

The cab couldn’t get them home fast enough. They didn’t say goodbye to Sam or Natasha, didn’t send any texts, forgot about the car that had supposedly waited for them all this time. Steve slid closed the driver’s partition after giving him the address, and Bucky’s hand had slipped down his pants just as the plastic lock clicked shut.

Bucky was a good kisser. It was something Steve had noticed long before Bucky ever kissed him (and meant it, of course – they’d kissed dozens of times, once or twice as kids, once to get the first one out of the way, and then a few more times on drunken evenings early in high school), when Bucky made it a habit to tongue-kiss every girl he took to the movies or out for dinner, and when he’d asked her to bring a date for Steve, too. Usually Steve didn’t like to think about those nights – boring, lonely despite Bucky and the two girls with them, hideously embarrassing – but thinking about Bucky kissing someone else was strangely exhilarating. Steve knew that Bucky didn’t do anything half-assed – he kissed with all his might and smiled hardest and laughed with as much gusto as he could muster – but a part of Steve always knew that the kissing he did with these girls was just practice, the lead up to the kisses that would mean something, that would make a difference in his life.

These were those kisses.

Bucky didn’t kiss like he had in the last few months – he kissed like old Bucky. He was all tongue one moment, and then he was biting Steve’s lip, and then he was pulling away to unbuckle Steve’s belt and unbutton his jeans and maneuver his hand around Steve’s rapidly growing boner. He was everywhere, all over Steve, inconsumable.

And then he was gone, paying the driver, pulling Steve from the backseat and steadying him on the pavement with his own body.

“Ooh,” Bucky said. His breath smelled like the last Bronx he’d had. “Who’s drunker-hic, you or me?”

Steve couldn’t tell, so he just shook his head. He wanted Bucky to kiss him again, he wanted to _kiss_ him, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. And Bucky was just so good.

“You’ve still got hiccups?” Steve asked, trying to ignore the way his dick was pressing uncomfortably against the seam of his zipper, smiling at the way Bucky was immovable, stranding him desperately out on the sidewalk.

Bucky hiccupped again, and then grinned.

“Guess that’s you, then,” Steve said, and with one final shove, he led Bucky upstairs and into their apartment.

The third-floor walkup had left them breathless, Bucky more so than Steve. Bucky unlocked the apartment, taking the keys from Steve’s front pocket – not without teasing him of course, digging around in his pocket for them oh so close to Steve’s dick – and their shirts were off in seconds after the door closed and locked behind them.

A window in the kitchen let in a little of the moonlight, so Bucky’s soft torso was bathed in a cool white light. In Steve’s drunken haze, he could have sworn that the metal arm looked natural, unquestionably part of Bucky’s physique, not some prosthetic weapon of mass destruction.

They stumbled into the living room, Bucky’s mouth hot on Steve’s, on his neck, on his ear, on his shoulder. They tripped over the sofa, and though Steve landed on top, Bucky flipped him over easily, pinned him to the sofa with his human arm and, with uncanny force, undid Steve’s fly with one hand and tugged his pants over his hips.

“Your pants are so tight,” Bucky said, moving his human hand down the length of Steve’s torso, leaving behind a stripe of hot skin. He used both hands to pull Steve’s pants over his ass.

“Not as tight as yours,” Steve said, sitting up. He bends his knees, got out from under Bucky, tugged his pants off his ankles. He leaned forward, put his hands on Bucky’s hips. “I don’t have this,” he said quietly, inches from Bucky’s face, as he grabbed at the roll of fat that bulged over the waist of Bucky’s leather pants. “And I don’t have this, either.” He moved his hands down to Bucky’s ass, round and twice as big as Steve ever remembered it being.

“I beg to differ,” Bucky said, and Steve felt Bucky squeeze his ass. They made eye contact; Steve’s breath caught in his throat when he saw how lust had driven out all the slurry, alcoholic languorousness in Bucky’s eyes.

Steve kissed him, open-mouthed and still panting, rolled his hips when Bucky started massaging his ass.

“I want you,” Steve said, breaking away and whispering it into Bucky’s ear. He moved close, pushed against Bucky with an urgency that was only met by the pressure of Bucky’s own erection on the inside of his thigh. “I want you so bad.”

“Come get me,” Bucky said. He slid a hand between Steve’s legs, rubbed his warm human hand over Steve’s boner, through his red briefs. “I want you to.” He slipped the head of Steve’s dick out, started rubbing the tip in his hand.

Steve moaned – Bucky took it as an opportunity to kiss him. Steve let Bucky press him to the sofa again, let him trail a line of kisses down his chest, over his stomach. Steve didn’t even realize Bucky had worked his briefs over his hips until his mouth was on his dick, warm and wet and – oh, he was doing something with his tongue…

Bucky hadn’t blown Steve in weeks. The most anyone had gotten in the last few months, really, was a lazy handjob here and there, a couple of coy kisses and the accidental boner-while-cuddling. Steve chalked it up to stress; Bucky hadn’t been himself, the PTSD had gotten worse and he was so tired from the nightmares that he hadn’t been up for anything.

Bucky used his thumb to rub small circles at the base, turned his face so that the tip of Steve’s dick tented one of his cheeks and he could feel the slight worrisome tickle of Bucky’s teeth on his skin.

Steve wound his fingers into Bucky’s hair, groaned as Bucky brought him within inches of coming – _Bucky_ , he moaned, pulling on his hair, _I’m so close_ – and then Bucky’s mouth was off of his dick, kissing him, pulling him upwards, leading him to the bedroom.

Where he was promptly thrown onto the bed. Bucky, still shirtless but wearing his leather pants, which caught the dim moonlight in a way that only emphasized all the curves and contours of his body, spread Steve’s knees and crawled between them.

“How close were you?” Bucky asked, teasing, smiling a little as he hooked his finger into the corner of his mouth.

“So close,” Steve groaned. It hurt to think about.

Bucky lowered himself to Steve’s hips, so Steve could feel the heat of Bucky’s breath on the head of his dick. “How close?” Bucky whispered, and he kissed the tip.

“Bucky.”

He cocked his eyebrows, made eye contact with Steve. “Okay,” he said, and he put Steve back in his mouth.

It was everything Steve could do not to scream – he wasn’t loud, usually, but the alcohol had fucked with his self-control, obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t be lying prostrate while his partner sucked him off, after three weeks of low – because even though Bucky was enjoying himself, Steve couldn’t take advantage of that completely, he couldn’t totally lose control because he still had to look out for Bucky.

So, instead, he threaded his fingers into Bucky’s hair – still on the longish side, for comfort – and fucked into his mouth. He nearly came when Bucky moaned somewhere deep inside his throat, and then, without warning, Bucky pulled off him again.

Steve groaned.

“Shhh,” Bucky said, running a finger down Steve’s lips. He kissed him. “Gonna fuck you instead.”

“Okay,” Steve said, and he leaned up again, chased Bucky’s mouth until he was sitting up. He watched Bucky slide off the bed and open the nightstand drawer. He set a bottle of lube and a condom on the table, and then he set about taking off his pants. Steve had forgotten he was still wearing them – all of Steve’s clothes were out in the living room, he remembered now. He watched Bucky wriggle out of his pants, the pudge around his hips and middle bouncing as he shimmied them down his thighs. In the process, the hem of his blue briefs slipped down to reveal the top of his ass, and Steve felt his tongue poke out of his mouth.

Bucky turned around. “Oh, yeah?” he said, and Steve self-consciously sucked his tongue back in.

“You’re so hot,” Steve said, breathless, and he grabbed Bucky’s hips and pulled him closer, tugged his underwear down and watched as he sprang out, harder than Steve thought he’d be. “Oh…” he said, grinning a little, reaching for the condom. He tore the foil between his teeth, watching as the corner of Bucky’s mouth turned up, and rolled it onto him.

“You ready?” Bucky asked. He took Steve’s face in his hands, rubbed his human thumb down Steve’s left cheek. Steve nodded. Then Bucky took his shoulders and threw him back on the bed. Steve scooted back on the bed, spread his knees. The sight of Bucky’s soft back and the curve of his bare ass had been enough to keep Steve hard in the interim, and the second Bucky entered him, it was like they hadn’t stopped at all.

Bucky thrust himself into Steve, hands on his hips, and Steve felt pressure build at the base of his chest as he pushed back to meet Bucky. He wasn’t going to last long.

“Fuck,” Steve muttered, and he brought his hands up to guide Bucky’s hips. His skin was warm and soft and Steve liked the way he could see the indents his fingers left on Bucky’s flesh when he squeezed him.

Bucky leaned forward, and Steve felt the weight of Bucky’s belly pour onto his own stomach. A little noise came out of his mouth, something in between a groan and a grunt.

“Bucky,” he murmured, and Bucky leaned over and kissed him, long and deep. “I’m so close,” he whispered in his ear.

Bucky pushed harder inside Steve. “Talk to me,” Bucky said. “I want to be where you are.”

Steve put a hand on the small of Bucky’s back, his middle finger in the deepest point in the little dimple there, and he told Bucky how close he was to coming, how good Bucky was at fucking him, how he’d never want anyone else to do it ever again. He rolled his hips, Steve rolling up to meet him each time, their bodies pressed together, hot and slick with sweat, and then Bucky pulled up quickly, Steve in the middle of telling him how good Bucky felt inside him, wrapped his metal hand around Steve’s dick and started jacking it, and that was when Steve stopped thinking.

He didn’t know that would feel so good. He moaned, even closer than before, put a hand on Bucky’s hip again and then, careful not to scream out, he came all over the bed, hot and sticky on the sheets.

Bucky wasn’t far behind. It was like seeing the relief on Steve’s face was erotic in its own right – two more thrusts and Bucky was throwing his head back, making a strangled little noise in the back of his throat, emptying himself into Steve. And then he was leaning back down, licking up Steve’s chest and meeting his lips.

They stayed like that for a while, Bucky inside Steve as he hunched over and kissed Steve’s neck, drew a line of kisses from his nose to his chin, stroked Steve’s sides with his warm hands. All Steve could focus on was the way Bucky felt inside him, tight and full and right, and the way his stomach felt soft against him.

Bucky pulled out slowly when he finally did, and Steve wasn’t sure if he missed feeling Bucky inside him or on top of him. They cleaned up together, stripped the bed of its sheets and put new ones on, and as Steve settled in beside Bucky on the new, clean ones, he promised himself he’d find more reasons to be beneath Bucky in the future.

They fell asleep with every inch of their bodies pressed together, Steve on the right side, holding Bucky in his arms, his face pressed against the warm skin between his shoulder blades.

 

Steve was making pancakes in the kitchen when Bucky wandered in, wearing a too-tight pair of sweatpants that obviously belonged to Steve. His hair hung in his face and the heel of his metal hand was pressed to his brow bone, like he was trying to quell a headache.

“Hey,” Steve said quietly. His head didn’t pound, but he was sure he was better equipped to handle the aftereffects of alcohol than Bucky was; being frozen for seventy years was definitely easier on the brain than intermittent electric shocks and brainwashing, or whatever exactly it was that they’d done to Bucky to make him the Winter Soldier.

“Hey,” he said, taking a deep breath and putting his hand in his pocket. Steve flipped the pancakes over. “This has been…ringing all morning.”

Steve turned around again, set the finished pancakes on a plate. Bucky had produced Steve’s cell phone from the pocket. “Why didn’t you answer it?”

“I did, but it just started yelling at me, so I hung up.”

Steve, with a sharp exhalation out his nose, took the phone from Bucky and looked at the caller ID. Natasha. He answered as Bucky fixed himself a plate.

“ _What_ is your problem?” she said, and Steve pulled the phone away from his ear.

“Told you,” Bucky murmured, putting a hand on Steve’s hip as he passed him to sit at their table.

“Hi, Natasha,” Steve said calmly.

“You just left the club without saying anything last night. I know you’re old, and I know Barnes is recovering from being brainwashed past all recognition, but I didn’t think you’d forget common _courtesy._ ”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “Things just…escalated pretty quickly last night, and we had to get out of there.” He made eye contact with Bucky across the room. His cheeks were full of pancake, and he grinned, gave Steve a thumbs-up. Something fluttered low in Steve’s gut.

“Oh,” Natasha said, the change of tone in her voice obvious. “Is everything okay?”

Steve smiled, still looking at Bucky. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Better than, really.”

“Oh.” Another, even more obvious shift in tone. “And how are you feeling today, Rogers?”

“Pretty damn swell.”

He heard Natasha snicker. “Well, then. All right. Don’t do that to me again, Rogers. I trust you now, remember?”

He would never forget. “I do,” he said, and then he hung up.

“What, are you signing your life away to her, or something?” Bucky asked as soon as Steve put the phone down.

“What?”

“Was that a vow?” Bucky asked, looking up, shoveling more pancakes in his mouth. He’d taken the whole stack – eight pancakes – and Steve mentally patted himself on the back for foreseeing this.

“Ha. No,” Steve said. “She was just checking in.”

Bucky nodded. Steve made more pancakes, eight for himself, two more for Bucky, and sat down across from him. Bucky ate his last two lazily, quietly, his eyes trained on Steve the whole time.

“What?” Steve asked, six pancakes in.

“Nothing,” Bucky said. “Thinking about last night.”

A finger of dread poked at Steve’s stomach. He put his fork down. “You wanna talk about anything?”

Bucky looked down. “Not really. It was…a lot, I guess. Being there.”

Steve’s lungs tightened. “Too much?”

Bucky shrugged. “More like…too soon. And I mean just being there, of course,” he added, leaning across the table to take Steve’s hand. “It’s not…it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Steve nodded. “Okay.” He felt Bucky squeeze his hand and looked up.

“Really,” he said. “I love you. And it’s…it’s got nothing to do with you. Or, maybe it’s only the good things.”

“What?”

Bucky sighed, pushed his hair back with his metal hand. “I…I needed a push. Maybe it didn’t seem that way to you last night, or maybe it hasn’t seemed that way to you in a long time, but I needed it. And maybe last night was that push. It wasn’t…terrible, being there. I slept fine. I feel fine now, aside from this goddamned headache.” He chuckled. “You asked, and I agreed, and that’s on me. But I had a good time, and I think that’s on you.”

Steve smiled, quietly at first, and then full-on beamed. “Okay.”

They finished their pancakes in silence, Bucky holding Steve’s hand, and Steve felt like one of those old couples he’d seen in cafes from time to time, not looking at each other but holding hands, as if for dear life, as if they did not know how else to move except beside the other person.


End file.
